The Holiday
by lun27
Summary: Hermione is sent on a holiday-job after burning herself out with curse-breaking. She finds herself with none other than Draco Malfoy as her partner. They are placed in a strange safe house. But what are they really there for? And why does their bickering and his taunts all too often turn into flirty banter and deeply personal conversations? A mid-war character study.


**Summary: Hermione is sent on a 'holiday'-job after burning herself out with one curse-breaking job after another. She finds herself with none other than Draco Malfoy as her partner, they are placed in a strange safe house they need to prepare for later use. But is that really what they are there for? And why does their bickering and his taunts all too often turn into flirty banter and deeply personal conversations?**

**A mid-war character study. Curse Breaker AU.**

**-o-**

**Big thanks to my beta Verity Grahams! She's a big Snily fan, so it meant the world to me, that she lowered herself to some Dramione ;) Thank you, Vee!**

**This is a little (late) Christmas present for my longtime beta (and alpha) Nora Fares. She made tons of fanart for my stories already :3 Hope you like this!**

o.O.o

The letter was short as were all letters, these days.

_Take some time off, H. PK at SH Buckbeak, front porch._

Hermione memorized the safe house and the portkey location, then burned the short note that Padma had decoded for her.

Watching the paper disintegrate in orange flames came with a warm satisfaction at the simplicity and genius of their information system. The Death Eaters were still trying to find their mode of communication.

After three years of operating several telegraphs which were distributed between their headquarters and safe houses, they hadn't figured it out. They didn't think to look at Muggle methods that dated that far back. Of course, they had caught up with the current technological standards. They had even paid several Muggle hackers to get into their server system. So back to old-school methods, it was. It was a good thing Mad-Eye had such an obscure interest in Muggle warfare history, enough to build their complete telegraphy network and train interpreters in morse code.

Sadly, that meant she had to pause her lengthy scholarly debates with Viktor. Recently, he had sent an intriguing book on the historic separation of the southern Goblin population from wizarding society in the late 18th century to her. She also missed out on a lot of Luna's detailed travel reports to America where she was looking for supporters for their cause in the MACUSA government.

Hermione sighed. This mission would be boring, but after her short period of burnout syndrome—a consequence of travelling across the country several times a day to work three cases at the same time—she was now handled with kid gloves and put into forced holiday mode.

The Order couldn't exactly afford to give anyone holiday. Especially not to one of their few curse breakers. So she still had to work on small cases.

She packed her things and appareated to the caves near Hogsmeade. It was where Sirius had been hiding with Buckbeak during their third year; it felt like centuries ago now.

The caves didn't really have a front porch, they weren't even anything close to a safe house. She found herself searching for the stupid portkey for over half an hour until finally, she discovered a broken VHS cassette labelled as 'Die Hard' under a stone.

Briefly, Hermione was lost in the nostalgia of Christmases past when looking at the old tape.

Then she tapped the cassette with her wand to activate it. She felt the familiar pull behind her navel and forced herself to keep her eyes open while she spun through empty space to her destination. She found that she felt a lot less nauseous if she kept them open, with the side effect of having dry eyes for at least two hours afterwards, but it was worth it to save herself from vomiting.

She landed with a thud on a lonely country road. A fine drizzle made her hair frizzier than usual as she walked towards a bedraggled little house. A rusty nail was hammered into the front door, and small animal bones littered the front step.

"Disgusting," she murmured as she magicked them away and checked the door for curses. There were only some trespassing wards which she disabled before opening it.

Hermione wasn't quite sure where she was, but she needed to transform this place into a safe house somehow. She wondered if it was an old Death Eater hideout. That would mean there could be traps and cursed objects everywhere.

She ventured into the narrow hall and peeked into the rooms left and right.

There was a living room with an overturned sofa, which looked positively ancient. Further down the hall was a small loo and behind that…

A clunking sound from behind the door at the end of the hall startled her, and within the blink of an eye, she had her wand held in front of her defensively. She crept down towards the noise, as stealthily as possible, just the way Mad-Eye had been trained her.

She wasn't alone in this house, and this wasn't exactly an environment she'd expect to meet a friend. It could be anyone from a straying beggar, looking for a place to stay, to Voldemort himself, hatching yet another of his sinister plans.

'_Constant vigilance_,' she heard her inner Moody bark at her. She remembered to silence her steps in case one of the old floorboards would creak.

The door suddenly swung open and she very nearly hexed the man who stepped into the hall. He seemed to be just as startled as she was and barely managed to keep his wand out of her face.

"Bloody hell! Do you want to get killed, Granger?" There was that annoyed drawl she was all too familiar with.

Despite the chances being drastically low, she had stumbled upon a friend, and not a foe. Although, it didn't quite feel like meeting a friend.

She pursed her lips and put her wand away. "Fancy meeting you here, Malfoy. I guess we were put on the same case."

He crossed his arms and sneered down at her. "Figures they would send someone to babysit me. I'm quite capable of doing this alone, you can fuck off and find your own job."

"Believe me, I prefer working solo. Let's just split the house and try to stay out of each other's way."

She wasn't exactly keen to work with Malfoy. He was still the same prick he had been in school. Apparently, redemption didn't change a person, even when they worked their way up to a curse breaking position in the Order.

"You take the kitchen." He grinned at her mockingly.

"Very funny, I'll leave the loo to you then."

"Already finished that."

She raised her eyebrows in surprise.

Malfoy shrugged. "I like to start with the least appealing tasks."

Hermione usually went the same way about her tasks. She resented that most of her friends tended to leave the unpleasant jobs till the end, pushing them away in the hopes they would magically sort themselves out, or far more likely, that someone else would do it for them.

"It could do with a little more space and a tub, if you ask me," she remarked, recalling the narrow space she had peeked into only briefly; there was only a sink beside the toilet and a shower squeezed in opposite.

He regarded her as if weighing up his options and the benefits of fighting her. "I guess we could make it a little more cosy. We'll probably be here for a day or two."

She frowned, of course he only thought of himself. She swallowed a comment and squeezed past him to inspect the kitchen that he had just stepped out of.

It looked like no one had set foot in it in years, if not decades. Maybe Malfoy wasn't wrong, they would need to take some time to make this house habitable. Why should they live in discomfort? She cast a scourgify on the work-tops which didn't do much, but at least the not-so-fine layer of dust disappeared.

* * *

They worked through the entire day in silence. Each of them staying clear of the other.

The kitchen had many drawers and nooks that Hermione meticulously checked for dark objects, spells and then there were the loose floorboards which were sometimes more dangerous than a hexed knife. She had, unfortunately, experience with both.

When the lights faded and the blues and greens turned to grey, Hermione lit some candles that she pulled from her infamous beaded bag. She then conjured a small fire on the stove, before lifting the stasis charm from one of her food rations and warming it up. She used one of the pots she had found earlier. They had needed cleaning quite thoroughly.

When the smell of Molly's pot roast filled the small house, she heard Malfoy enter the kitchen behind her. Hermione didn't turn, although she was a little uncomfortable with him standing where she couldn't see him.

"Is it safe to use?" He came up beside her and eyed her fire atop of the stove. "I didn't know Muggles still cooked like cavemen."

"Bugger off! The stove is broken. I know how to use technology better than you do!"

He grinned, apparently enjoying how easily she was riled up. "Make me some too?"

Hermione scoffed. "You are an adult, aren't you? Make your own food. I'm not your mother."

"Thank Merlin for that," he grunted and summoned his own ration, a rather small bundle of sandwiches.

They looked rather soggy and Hermione found herself feeling a little sorry for him.

He looked like he felt sorry for himself, too, as he slumped down at the small kitchen table and chewed on one edge of the soft bread.

Hermione deliberately left some of her warmed up food in the pot, it was too much anyhow, before settling with her plate opposite to him. She didn't quite offer him the leftovers, but she was certain, he'd take them once she left the kitchen. It was a bit tense between them as they ate in silence and she clung to an easy topic to talk about.

"I didn't think I'd meet anyone here, otherwise I would have brought some more stuff to cook proper food."

He shrugged. "One would think they'd inform us of having a partner, but this blasted 'moth code' doesn't even allow for the most essential information to be transmitted. What a total bullshit."

"It's _Morse_ Code, named after Samuel Morse," she supplied. "It has nothing to do with insects. And for that matter, it is very useful and for its time it was highly advanced technology."

"Well, it's completely useless if you ask me."

She scrunched up her nose. "No one asked you, Malfoy. You should be happy that my father could supply us with the equipment needed, otherwise we'd be unable to send any secret messages at all. Unless, of course, we'd stay within a three mile distance of each other in order to operate walkie talkies."

"Walkie Talkies," he repeated slowly in between two bites. "Muggles sometimes sound like big toddlers to me."

She snorted. "It's funny."

"What?" He looked at her sceptically.

"I used to think the exact same thing about wizarding society when I first learned about it; Professor McGonagall had told me there was a school named after a particularly warty pig."

He regarded her as if thinking on her words. Then he shrugged. "I suppose it sounds a bit weird if you look at it from that perspective."

Hermione let her eyes bulge comically. "Draco Malfoy considering another perspective — that must be a first!"

"Oh shut up, Granger. You don't know shit about me."

She decided to let it go and change the topic. "You trained under Bill, I heard?"

Malfoy nodded. "He took me on his travels to Russia and Japan."

She made a non-committal noise that indicated mild interest, but he didn't elaborate and so they ate in silence for a while. It was a bit awkward.

"So your dad actually works for us?" Malfoy asked after a while. "Isn't he…"

"A Muggle? Yes. He served in the army and managed to get access to the technology and some more information on how to use them."

"The army? Like Aurors?"

"Hm… a tiny bit bigger than that. With about the budget of a small country and weapons that could wipe out entire cities in seconds, but yes, a bit like Aurors, I suppose."

Malfoy scoffed. He clearly didn't take her seriously. "I thought he was a healer of sorts, didn't you always boast about your parents looking at teeth?"

She was a bit taken aback that he remembered that tiny detail about her. "They do," she said. "He became an army medic to finance his education. He served some years and in turn they paid for his tuition. It's quite expensive in America to go to dental school."

"He's American?"

Hermione nodded. "From Oregon, but he emigrated to the UK after he met my mum when he was stationed here for the later part of his service."

"Huh, I didn't know that."

She smiled. "You didn't really seem like you were interested in my personal history when we went to school."

He rolled his eyes at her. "It's not like you were interested in mine either."

"Actually…"

"Hah, don't tell me you had some big crush on me or some bollocks like that!"

"No," she said with emphasis, trying to remain calm. It was always the best approach to remain calm and collected with deliberately annoying children, so it surely was the same with Malfoy. "I happened to do some research on the whole Pureblood mania after you happened to declare me unworthy of possessing magic. I learned a lot about the sacred twenty eight, _your_ family included."

"I guess, there's a lot of historic records about us, we've always been important." He grinned cheekily and Hermione found she quite liked him like this. More... relaxed than usual.

"Oh, don't flatter yourself. Most of it is rather ugly when you look into the details. A lot of bribing, blackmail, torture, propaganda…"

"Yeah, do shut up. I bet your family history isn't all bright and shiny either."

She quieted. It wasn't. But not the way he meant it and it slowly seemed to dawn on him when she didn't defend her ancestors.

"America, huh?"

"America," she said.

"Tell me about it."

She raised her eyebrows. "You _really_ want to know?"

He sighed. "You clearly know everything there is to know about me, I don't like to be at a disadvantage."

She smiled. The world could tilt on its axis, but Draco Malfoy would always stay the same. It was somewhat comforting to have this stability.

"My dad's family never had much, they couldn't afford his education so he had to serve, although, he really dislikes war. You see, there might be equality and all that, but if your family, historically speaking, never had anything to inherit to their children. They lived in a poor neighbourhood where they had to send their kids to underfinanced public schools where they are confronted with crime on a daily basis. It's very hard to get out of that. And that doesn't even take into account the stigma of being a person of colour."

"And before that?"

She looked down at her plate, pushing her food around a bit. "I don't know where my ancestors come from. Their history has been erased when they were shipped to America, their stories forbidden, their songs censored. It's also not something my grandparents liked to talk about."

They finished their meal and Hermione declared that she'd put up her camp bed in the living room for the night. When she left the kitchen, she heard him scrape the leftovers out of her cooking pot and she smiled a little to herself.

Malfoy wasn't _so_ bad.

* * *

When she left the loo, her teeth brushed and flossed, her hair tied into a messy bun and clad in leggings and an old t-shirt from her dad, she discovered that Malfoy had set up his cot too, and not too far from hers. The living room was the only room big enough, beside the kitchen, to fit them. The other rooms were still filled with dead rats and broken furniture. She tried to not let it bother her.

Hermione had no problem sharing a room with multiple people — they often had to cram a whole team into a narrow hall or moist cellar due to the lack of safe houses. It shouldn't be any different now, but it seemed more intimate with only two people sharing instead of five or six. Especially since the other one was Malfoy. Hermione couldn't quite place why.

He was still rummaging in the kitchen, so Hermione snuggled into her sleeping bag and extinguished the candles safe for one.

She rolled onto her stomach and pulled a book from her pack for a bit of nighttime reading. When Malfoy made himself comfortable in his cot, she didn't look up, too immersed in _Essays on Archiving the Impossible with Alchemy._

Only when he grumbled something about needing sleep, she looked up to find him glaring at her from his sleeping bag. He looked so normal, lying there, hair a bit tousled, a small pillow shoved under his head. She blinked a few times to keep herself from staring for too long.

"Of course, sorry." Hermione waved her wand to extinguish the last of the candles. "I hope there's no ghosts or anything here trying to attack us once we're asleep," she murmured.

"I set up wards on the room already," he replied, turning his back to her.

Hermione tried to find a comfortable position, overly aware of every noise she made that could disturb him. Settling on her back, she stared at the ceiling above her, or at least at where she knew the ceiling would be. The room was pitch black and smelled faintly of mice droppings.

Mentally cataloging the day, she tried to quiet her thoughts, but once one part of her consciousness calmed down, another replayed an old memory or an emotion she had felt at one point in her life. Malfoy's presence woke all kinds of childhood images she had stowed away in the dark corners of her mind.

Sleep seemed impossible.

She sighed. "You know," Hermione broke the silence. "I don't really know everything about you."

"Oh Lord, that's a travesty," Malfoy grunted beside her. "How could you neglect such a large gap in your knowledge for all this time, Granger?"

"Okay, if you want to be like this… we don't need to talk to each other."

He sighed and turned back around to her. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness and she could make out the paleness of his face. "Spill."

She didn't reply right away, needing some time to get over the small grudge she was building like a fence between them. "I might know everything there is to know about your family history, but I don't know why you here with us and not with them. And that's more important, isn't it?"

"Is it? After all, the action of one family member is just a small thing in a long line of wrong-doings and suffering caused. It all contributed to the world we live in today, didn't it? I don't see why my story should change that."

He said it as a matter of fact, but Hermione felt a heartbreak of emotions well up inside her like a wave. "Logically, yes, but…"

"Oh, don't tell me you are willing to put logic aside, that's rich coming from you."

"It's worth a lot more than you make it seem."

"To whom?"

"To me."

He propped himself up and leaned on an elbow and regarded her. "And what makes you think I care about that?"

"Because if it's worth something to me, it's for others too. Bill always speaks very highly of you."

"Bet he's the only one."

"Why I are you like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like, like… why are you trying to paint yourself in a bad light? Do you want people to dislike you?"

"No, I happen to enjoy when people like me. I am only human after all."

She scoffed. "Indeed." Malfoy was more vain than anyone she knew.

He ignored her quip. "I just don't want anyone to get their expectations too high and then discover that they're only smoke and mirrors and that my true motive is entirely selfish like it has always been. I'm no 'Saint Potter' and I will never be."

She was a bit stunned at how much he had revealed to her. It sounded so final. Her thoughts circled around his words; she didn't quite notice the point where she fell asleep.

Hermione's dreams were a kaleidoscope of Hogwarts mixed with dark rooms, winds howling and someone following her. Watching her quietly was an obscure presence breathing down her neck.

She woke with a start, the first rays of sunlight caressing her skin.

Trying not to wake Malfoy, who still lay sprawled out on his narrow cot beside her, she freed herself from her sleeping bag and tiptoed to the small loo, splashing cold water on her face.

She walked into the kitchen, putting a kettle with water on the stove, lighting it as she had done the evening before.

While waiting for the water to boil, Hermione watched a crow cleaning its feathers by the window. Outside, the air was clear and crisp. Soft pinks from the rising sun kissed the frozen tips of the forest in the distance, pale fog lay at the tree's feet.

Malfoy stumbled into the kitchen, still looking half asleep while pulling a shirt over his head. For a split second, she had full view of his lean chest and abdomen. Hermione blushed and turned away.

"About yesterday…" she started. "You never told me, what are your reasons for switching sides?"

"That's what keeps you up at night?" he asked, eyebrows raised high.

Hermione pursed her lips, unwilling to confess that it had, indeed, kept her awake for some time.

He laughed to himself while he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

"Are you going to tell me or not?" Hermione asked, put out a bit.

He shrugged, suddenly looking tired as if he wanted to crawl back into bed. "I want my dad to live. This was the only way to guarantee he gets the treatment he needs without a madman making it worse."

She had heard about Lucius Malfoy needing intensive medical care at St. Mungo's. No one knew the details though. "That's not selfish then, is it?" she asked.

He didn't look at her. Instead, he sat down heavily into one of the wooden chairs causing the old wood to groan under his weight.

"I'm making some tea," Hermione announced as she watched him. He massaged the bridge of his nose, looking positively exhausted. Malfoy looked like he had slept about as much and as peacefully as she had, perhaps less.

There was something in the tea box — it made a strange rattling noise as she lifted it off the shelf — so Hermione checked the contents, finding it empty except for a small ring with a single black stone imbedded in it.

It looked inconspicious enough, and without thinking, she turned the can upside down and let the ring drop into her open palm.

"Granger!" Malfoy called out.

That was the last thing she heard before a searing pain shot up her hand, along her arm and right into her brain. White exploded in front of her eyes as she gasped for air. Hermione wanted to scream, release the burning anguish that flared through her body, but the air was stuck in her lungs.

Darkness pressed down on her like a heavy weight. The last thing she felt was someone pulling her up.

* * *

Her eyes were dry, but her whole body shook, begging them to release tears, to wash away the pain that radiated through her.

People were walking around her, she wanted to reach out to them, beg them for help, plead for them to relieve her of the agony. Her body didn't move, and after a while of strangled breathing, her brain shut down again.

* * *

The next time she came to her senses, everything felt dull, as if she wasn't in her own skin anymore but a fish swimming through cool water. Just her hand was burning hot as if molten lava was crawling up her wrist.

"I don't care what you think, you will not cut off her wand hand," someone shouted. Their voices were muted, echoing in the most unnatural way, but she was sure it was Malfoy. "Let me through, and I'll fix her!"

Someone replied, more quiet and calmly. She couldn't make out their words.

"I've studied for this, I know more about curses and dark magic than the whole Order combined," Malfoy said. "If you don't let me fucking treat her, she _will_ die."

Always so self-assured, Hermione thought.

* * *

"I swear, you are the dumbest curse breaker on the planet. Touching a Horcrux with bare hands…"

Hermione groaned, trying to tear open her eyes, but they felt like someone had poured instant glue all over her lids.

"About time, Granger," he said. "Potter is bloody infatuating, when you're not around to beat some reason into him."

"Shut up," she said, her voice hoarse and her tongue heavy. She blinked a few times until Malfoy's face came into focus. "Why are you here?"

Hermione turned her head, finding herself in a small Muggle hospital. She remembered it, they had turned into a safe house for healing their soldiers.

Trying to raise herself up, she found her throbbing arm fixed, a needle inserted into her vein at the juncture of her elbow.

"Stay still," Malfoy said.

She craned her neck to see what they were giving her. "What the fuck?" She flinched at the curse leaving her lips. "Sorry," Hermione mumbled. "But why are you… why are we…?"

"We're doing an exchange transfusion, your blood was tainted."

Her heckles raised. Malfoy hadn't changed a single bit since she had broken his nose in third year, the bigoted prick. "You loathsome…"

"Chill! From the curse, damn it. What the heck, Granger? I'm saving your bloody life here."

"Oh," she dropped back onto the bed heavily.

Malfoy scoffed. "Yeah."

"So they didn't cut my hand off."

He shook his head. "I managed to reverse the curse, but only by draining your blood. Imagine, you and I have the same blood type, who would have thought?"

"I'm basically pureblood now," she said, grinning.

"Ha, ha," Malfoy laughed dryly. "You wish."

Hermione remembered how he didn't want to be seen as a hero, but he was better than he thought he was, even if he could be a real prick sometimes.

"Thank you," she said. "You saved me."

"Only because Potter accused me of cursing you," Malfoy grumbled, but a smile played around the corner of his mouth that he couldn't hide from her detail-trained gaze.

"It's a good sign that you're awake, this should be the last transfusion you'll need."

She nodded. "What was that about a Horcrux?"

"They gave you the wrong portkey location," Malfoy grumbled. "Apparently you were only tasked to do a standard safe house buildup, but stumbled into a high-security mission. I was at the Gaunt house to recover the Horcrux we were expecting there."

"You mean that was _the_ Gaunt house?"

"The very same."

"Jesus." Hermione stared at the ceiling wide-eyed, thinking back on all the mistakes she had made. Not having all the information for a start. It was a wonder she was still in one piece!

"Who?" Malfoy asked.

"What? Oh, just some ancient guy Muggles pray to. I could be six feet under right now!"

Malfoy looked at her as if she had just explained Quantum physics to him. "Muggles are weird. But I agree, you should be dead. You came wholly unprepared. Good thing I was there first and removed the undetectable curses on the front door."

She smiled. "My savior." Malfoy shifted in his chair, visibly uncomfortable and Hermione smiled even wider. "I told you, you're not so bad."

"Shut up."

o.O.o

THE END

o.O.o

**I know, I promised new multi-chaps, but this was important! I'm writing on something great at the moment though, give me some time to make it perfect. It's worth it, believe me!**


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